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In this week’s issue:

• 💡 Embrace uncertainty, seek truth, foster innovation.

• 🤿 Diving deep into foundational SEO techniques for startup growth

Reading time: 8 minutes

A Fresh Point of View

Morgan Housel's quote reminds us that as founders, we tend to prefer knowing for sure rather than facing the truth. We often come across uncertainties, such as market trends, user preferences, and technology changes. Naturally, we want to get rid of uncertainties, but we must be careful not to let this desire affect our judgment.

It's easy to believe what we want to hear rather than objectively looking at the available information. To overcome this bias, we should encourage a culture of truth-seeking.

However, some level of uncertainty is normal and even necessary for innovation. Embracing uncertainty can lead us to explore new ideas and find untapped opportunities. We need to find a balance between seeking certainty where possible and taking calculated risks when the potential benefits are worth it.

In conclusion, Morgan Housel's observation serves as a reminder to be mindful of our beliefs and decision-making. By embracing uncertainty with a data-driven approach, we can make well-informed choices even if it means dealing with uncomfortable realities along the way.

The Dive Deep

My SaaS, RecapioGPT, receives 80% of its traffic from organic research. SEO is a long-term investment that you must prioritize to facilitate growth in the coming months. Consistent effort is crucial in the early stages, as otherwise, the results may not be satisfying. Let's examine some fundamental SEO techniques!

Keyword Research

Keyword research is about identifying relevant and high-traffic keywords related to your content and target audience. The goal is to find keywords with good search volume and manageable competition. By strategically incorporating these keywords, you can improve search engine visibility and attract organic traffic.

Targeting the right keywords improves your chances of ranking higher in search results, making it easier for users to find your website. Optimizing content with well-researched keywords enhances the user experience, helping visitors find what they need quickly. By aligning your content with your audience's interests, you increase engagement and conversions, driving the success of your website.

• Use Keyword Research Tools: Use tools like Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, and Ahrefs to find relevant keywords with search volume. Also, leverage keyworddit to extract subreddit keywords or Google Search to have associated words in queries.

• Use Competitors: Study competitor websites to identify their targeted keywords and gain insights for your content strategy. Create webpages comparing your application with them and catch users that search for alternatives. Explain why you are better than the others, check out beehiiv comparison page for example.

• Long-Tail and Secondary Keywords: Incorporate specific, longer phrases for less competition and more targeted audience reach. Don’t optimize every page on your site around commercial terms but rather for when users are not searching for what you sell. If you are selling “SEO training”, use keywords like: “link building”, “on-page SEO” and “SEO Tools”

On-page optimization

On-page optimization fine-tunes web pages to be search engine friendly and user-centric. This improves rankings and visibility by presenting valuable content to users and search engines.

On-page optimization is critical for SEO as it directly influences search engine perception and rankings. Structuring content with relevant headings and metadata helps search engines understand page context and improving user search results.

• Meta Tags and Descriptions: Craft compelling meta tags and descriptions that represent your content and entice users to click through to your page from search results. Use tools like Meta Tags Toolkit to preview, edit, and generate associated code for your website.

• Keyword Placement: Integrate targeted keywords naturally in your title tags, headings, and meta descriptions. Create well-structured pages with headers and paragraphs. For a product page, target between 300-500 words to communicate the content’s relevance to search engines.

Link building

Link Building is the practice of earning backlinks from other reputable and relevant websites. Backlinks are hyperlinks from one website to another. They signal to search engines that your content is valuable and trustworthy. Creating valuable and shareable content attracts other website owners to link to it, enhancing your website's authority and ranking.

Link building is a vital off-page SEO strategy. Backlinks act as votes of confidence from other websites, making your site more authoritative. Higher-quality backlinks lead to increased visibility in SERPs. Moreover, link building generates referral traffic from reputable platforms, increasing the potential for new visitors and customers. However, focus on earning natural and relevant backlinks to avoid search engine penalties for spammy link schemes.

• Link-Worthy Content: Develop high-quality, informative, and shareable content that provides value to your target audience and creates brand awareness. Content such as in-depth guides, case studies, or industry insights is more likely to attract natural backlinks from other websites.

• Guest Blogging: Identify authoritative websites and blogs in your niche and approach them with personalized outreach. Offer to contribute valuable guest posts or collaborate on content that aligns with their audience's interests. Use tools like Moz to check domain authority and Google Search queries to find guest websites:

  • [your_topic] "become an author"

  • [your_topic] "guest post"

  • [your_topic] inurl:contribute

• Leverage Niche Communities: Participate in niche communities like Indie Hackers, Product Hunt, and relevant subreddits. Engage with the community, provide value, and avoid spammy self-promotion. Submit your SaaS product or service to relevant SaaS directories and review platforms. These directories often provide opportunities for backlinks, and they can also drive targeted traffic to your site.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO optimizes the technical aspects of your website to improve search engine visibility and crawlability. Ensuring efficient crawling and indexing helps display your content in relevant search results.

Technical SEO supports on-page and off-page efforts. Proper optimization ensures search engine bots can crawl and index your site, avoiding poor rankings and visibility. By optimizing technical elements, you provide clear instructions, reaching a broader audience with relevant search results.

• Google Search Console: Connect your domain and regularly monitor Google Search Console to track your website's performance in search results, identify crawling and indexing issues, and receive important notifications from Google regarding your site.

• XML Sitemap and Robots.txt: Create an XML sitemap to help search engines index all pages of your website efficiently. Additionally, use a robots.txt file to guide search engine crawlers, instructing them on which pages to crawl or exclude from indexing. Once available, upload the sitemap to the Google Search Console for fast indexing.

• Optimize URL Structure: Create clean and descriptive URLs for each page, incorporating relevant keywords when possible. A well-structured URL helps search engines understand the content of the page and improves user readability.

Page speed optimization

Page speed optimization improves website loading speed and performance. Faster-loading sites rank higher and enhance user satisfaction.

Page speed is vital for SEO and user experience. Faster-loading sites receive search ranking boosts, increasing discovery by potential visitors. It also reduces bounce rates and boosts engagement and conversions, meeting users' expectations for quick access to information and services.

• Image Compression: Compress images without sacrificing quality. Use tools like ILoveIMG to reduce image file sizes and improve page load times. Also, leverage your JS framework image optimization such as the one from Nextjs.

• Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML: Reduce file sizes, leading to faster loading times. Modern JS framework does that out of the box, nevertheless, verify that you distribute the compressed version to your customers.

• Use Content Delivery Networks (CDNs): Utilize a CDN to distribute your website's static resources across multiple servers worldwide. This allows visitors to load resources from a server closer to their location, reducing latency and speeding up page loads. Leverage platforms such as Vercel, Netlify, or AWS CloudFront.

Mobile-Friendly and Responsive Design

Mobile-Friendly and Responsive Design ensures optimal user experience on various mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. It adapts layouts, images, and content based on screen size, providing a seamless and user-friendly experience.

With the rise of mobile browsing, mobile-friendly design is crucial. Google's mobile-first indexing prioritizes mobile versions for rankings, impacting visibility and traffic. A poor mobile experience leads to high bounce rates and reduced conversions.

• Use Responsive Web Design: Implement responsive design techniques to ensure your website's layout and content adapt seamlessly to various screen sizes, including smartphones, tablets, and desktops. Use libraries such as Tailwind or Bootstrap to develop faster if you are not proficient with CSS.

• Test on Multiple Devices: Regularly test your website on various mobile devices and browsers to ensure it displays correctly and functions smoothly across different platforms. Leverage your browser dev tools to render different screen sizes.

• Minimize Pop-ups and Interstitials: Avoid intrusive pop-ups or interstitials that disrupt the user experience on mobile devices. If you use them, ensure they are easily dismissible and do not cover essential content.

That’s it for today! 🙌

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Thanks for reading and see you next week,

Marc-Etienne